But expect to hear more of it now, I guess, because CommSec’s Craig James has decided to write about ‘The rise of and rise of Bitcoins’.

So, now you can expect everyone to be talking about it. Chances are someone from our National desk will commission a story on it, but it was in the paper two weeks ago, but heaven forbid they make their way down to the Markets section. And yes, I’m trash-talking them.

But with the CommSec note out, I’m going to avoid the topic like the plague and instead direct your attention to the more traditional safe-haven currency, the US dollar. This was what people used to convert their money into when no one knew what Bitcoin was.

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Moreover, in the five years to September 2008 - when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt - US currency in circulation grew at an average annual pace of 3.8 per cent. Post-Lehman, average annual growth has been 7.5 per cent.

“In the six months following the fall of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, holdings of $100 bills soared by $58bn, a 10 per cent jump," noted Mr Williams.

US currency holdings rose sharply when the European crisis worsened around mid-2010, Williams noted.

The strongest demand for US dollar cash comes from Argentina and the former Soviet Union, while all the bailout hullabaloo in Cyprus may also trigger renewed interest in US dollars.

■ Here are some pars:

– The surge in demand for US cash suggests that the world is worried about the safety of its banks and the future of the euro – but has no fear of inflation or default in the US. High budget deficits in the US have prompted warnings of a debt crisis, but no asset is more vulnerable to default or rising prices than paper money, because it does not pay any interest.

– According to one set of estimates by the Fed in Washington, the share of US currency held abroad has risen from about 56 per cent to nearly 66 per cent in the last five years.

Low bank interest rates in recent years mean that there is less of penalty to holding cash. But the demand for dollars means that the world is, in effect, making a gigantic interest free loan to the people of the United States.

Total dollar cash outstanding of $1,175bn finances about 10 per cent of the US national debt and saves about $29bn a year in interest at today’s rates. If two-thirds of that cash is outside the US then it amounts to a $19bn-a-year gift from the rest of the world – roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Cyprus.